May 1, 2014
Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large has taken what gun rights activists call “the easy route” by lamenting today that the answer to violent urban crime – resulting in three fatal Jet City shootings in recent days – is to repeal the Second Amendment.
Second Amendment advocates know there are lots of people like Jerry Large. The same suggestion came up last year in the Minneapolis Post, and even Vanity Fair. There were more than raised eyebrows in Texas last November when a professor at Texas A&M said it was time to repeal the amendment. Someone even has a Facebook page devoted to repeal.
Seattle Times readers are not reacting too favorably to Large’s suggestion. Some of them may have spent last weekend at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Indianapolis, or visited one of two gun shows held over the weekend in Puyallup and Tacoma. More than 75,000 people visited the NRA convention, many of them openly armed and more packing concealed handguns. Nobody suffered a scratch. Ditto here in the Evergreen State.
“I don’t believe the Second Amendment was ever intended to support the kind of gun craziness we contend with today,” Large contends, “but since it’s always used to ward off any common-sense gun reforms, maybe we ought to just fix the Constitution and be done with it.”
And what does Jerry consider “common sense?” He seems to favor banning guns in most public places, which are the places most violent crimes occur, including mass shootings. Gun bans have not prevented those crimes, but they did create risk-free working environments for the perpetrators.
Large likes the idea of “smart gun” technology. That may become a reality someday, but the technology is hardly 100-percent reliable, and until it is, such firearms are not worth the risk. If police and the president’s Secret Service detail won’t carry such guns, neither should private citizens.
Consider repealing the First Amendment. Certainly the Founders never dreamed that the nation would one day have on-line newspapers, 24/7 cable television news, and news agencies that serve more as lapdogs than watchdogs, especially for the current administration. Ben Franklin never saw an offset press or a desktop computer.
Would Franklin have remained silent if the White House covered up the terrorist murder of an American ambassador? Franklin was our ambassador to France during the Revolutionary War.
Is it not time for people like Large, or socialist City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, to be arrested or at least silenced for sedition? Why not silence Fox News for challenging the Obama administration’s explanation about Benghazi, and reporting on the Fast and Furious and IRS scandals? Once we start messing with the Bill of Rights, we don’t merely step onto the proverbial “slippery slope,” we jump off a cliff.
KVI’s morning drive time host John Carlson had questions for Large. Does the Seattle Times columnist think any of the people involved in Seattle’s shootings had their guns legally? Were any of them licensed to carry?
Large and other repeal proponents at least get it right when they acknowledge that erasing the Second Amendment is wishful thinking. Anti-gunners may not like the amendment, but they have the good fortune to live among other people who protect it zealously.
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